


and a song of praise upon your lips

by peacefrog



Series: box of chocolates [3]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drunkenness, Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23072086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog
Summary: Okay, so, they were probably dating. The movie date was probably a date. All those fancy pastry shops Quentin kept dragging Eliot to where they proceeded to make heart eyes at each other over rose petal jam filled cupcakes? Those were definitely dates.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: box of chocolates [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652323
Comments: 22
Kudos: 178





	and a song of praise upon your lips

After they decided kissing on the mouth was okay, Quentin and Eliot wanted to do it all the time. In every corner of the penthouse (“If you don’t stop sucking face while I’m trying to eat my sandwich,” Kady said one afternoon, “I’m literally going to feed you to the Baba Yaga.”), outside coffee shops, in between bites at the sushi place in Chelsea that Eliot loved. Once, they went to see a movie they couldn’t even remember the name of just to make out for two blissful, uninterrupted hours in the dark.

Okay, so, they were probably dating. The movie date was probably a date. All those fancy pastry shops Quentin kept dragging Eliot to where they proceeded to make heart eyes at each other over rose petal jam filled cupcakes? Those were definitely dates.

Eliot felt like a teenager, only somehow this was worse. Worse than hormones and awkward fumbling around his family’s burly farmhand, Jericho, and his open-collared flannel shirts. Worse than come stains in his boxer shorts. Worse than ripped out pages of magazines shoved between his mattress and box-spring. Worse than being a repressed virginal queer dreaming of the day he’d leave backwater Indiana for good and fuck boys in the big city to his heart’s content.

Because Eliot wasn’t a teenager anymore, and he certainly wasn’t a virgin. And it’s not like he and Quentin hadn’t already fucked. And there was the small matter of the alternate timeline where they spent fifty years living together and loving each other and raising a child. They had grandchildren. Eliot knew what it was like to have old man sex with Quentin. That had to count for something.

“Remind me of the rules again,” Eliot said one morning over breakfast. It had been three and a half weeks since Valentine’s Day. “Kissing, cuddling, hand jobs, you gave me a hickey last night…”

Quentin smirked, poking at his oatmeal with the edge of his spoon. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry. I definitely want you to do it again.” Eliot let that sit for a minute, popped a blueberry into his mouth and crushed it between his teeth. “You ate my come that one time. Does that make blow jobs technically okay?”

“I don’t know,” Quentin said. “Blow jobs seem like something boyfriends do.”

Eliot had to bite back the urge to fight him on that one. He’d certainly blown and been blown by his fair share of boys who weren’t boyfriends. Or even friends for that matter. Sometimes, he hadn’t even bothered getting their names. “Does fingering fall under the umbrella of hand stuff?” he asked instead.

Quentin let his spoon clank down into his bowl. “Penetration definitely seems like boyfriend stuff.”

“I’ve penetrated you plenty of times,” Eliot said before he could stop himself. Quentin’s face flushed redder than the strawberries in his oatmeal. 

“We’re not talking about the mo—” Quentin snapped his mouth shut, desperately trying to hide behind his too-short hair. “We’re not talking about that now.”

“Sorry.” Eliot Waugh, reigning champion of repressed feelings, somehow couldn’t even get that right. “Hey, why don’t we go to Fillory later, hm? Been a while. And as former High King, I happen to know of at least three hidden rooms in Whitespire that would be ideal locations to make out for hours and not talk about our feelings.”

Quentin pushed his barely-eaten bowl of oatmeal across the counter, his expression grave, his shoulders slumping a little more by the second. “No, um, not today,” he said, rising to his feet.

Things got weird after that.

Not that things hadn’t been weird for a while. Creating arbitrary rules about which parts of your not-boyfriend’s body could go in your mouth while keeping your hands wide open for business was admittedly weird. Deciding that cuddling was fine—the best—but hand holding in broad daylight was a bridge too far was probably weirder. Making out was good—great, fucking fantastic—even in public sometimes, but god forbid they acknowledge that alternate half-century of their lives where they were married in all but name.

Quentin went out that night with Julia and Kady in tow, came home at three in the morning stoned out of his skull. Not that Eliot had been waiting up, that would be silly. It’s just that he couldn’t sleep. Insomnia was a perfectly normal fact of Eliot Waugh’s existence. The three of them raided the fridge, popping open beers while Quentin performed a card trick that Kady found so hilarious she fell to the floor in a fit of laughter. Quentin’s giggle was infectious. It made Eliot’s chest burn.

Eliot left them, went upstairs to his room. Twenty minutes later, Quentin crawled in under the covers, mouthing at Eliot’s neck and shoving his hand down the front of his shorts.

“Q… we should…” Eliot gasped when Quentin started to stroke. “We should talk. About… earlier...”

Quentin whined. “Want you,” he mumbled, flipping Eliot over onto his back. And Eliot let him, because, god, Eliot wanted too. Eliot wanted so much.

They kissed with a hunger, no finesse to the way their bodies began to move. Quentin sucked a bruise into Eliot’s shoulder, and Eliot’s fingers dug roughly into the flesh of Quentin’s ass through his pants. They rutted together, panting, whining, stuttering out whispered words of praise and longing as they brought each other right up to the edge.

“Let me… let me touch you,” Eliot said, but Quentin was already coming in his pants. And then Eliot was coming too. And they stayed tangled up together until their breathing evened out, and the cold fist of reality started closing in around them.

Quentin rolled over, and got out of bed, and left Eliot there alone in the dark.

—

All things considered, Eliot wasn’t actually surprised when shit started falling apart. There was a reason neither of them wanted to talk about all those Big Terrible Things to begin with. Because once they did, once they admitted this was something more than hickeys and hand jobs in the dark, the collapsing of it all might just be more than either of them could take.

Quentin retreated into himself again, the way he’d been before Valentine’s Day. He stopped coming to Eliot’s bed. Everything just sort of… stopped. So it goes. A couple days passed. Eliot was very lonely. He took Margo to the Great Lawn in Central Park for a picnic, because why the fuck not.

“You should bring Coldwater here,” she said, shoveling bruschetta into her mouth. “Unless that whole thing’s DOA.”

Margo gave him a… look. She’d been in Fillory with Josh and Fen for days, but she knew. He knew that she knew. Eliot had to bite back the urge to snark.

“Dead as every god who’s ever had the misfortune of crossing our path,” he lamented, sipping his rosé. “Don’t act like you’re surprised.”

“Not surprised…” She narrowed her eyes. “But should I be concerned?”

Eliot took another sip of his wine, considered her for a moment, then pointedly shot back the remainder of the glass. “Why would you be?”

“Because you’ve been following him around making fuck me eyes for weeks,” she said. “And I know how you feel about—”

Eliot held up a hand. “Bambi. I will politely ask you to refrain from all mentions of catching feelings until I’ve at least finished this bottle,” he said, pouring himself another glass, nearly filling it to the brim. “And it’s not that serious. Save your concern for something else.”

She didn’t push, even though he knew she really wanted to, and he loved her for that. He loved her for so many things. They finished their bottle of rosé in record time, and because they were goddamn magicians they refilled it again. Magicked wine always tasted like shit—and you generally couldn’t get away with refilling a bottle more than once because it only went downhill from there—but Eliot couldn’t be bothered to have standards today. Eliot was going to get shit-faced and watch the fucking clouds roll by and not think about Quentin and his stupid perfect kissable mouth at all.

There was only one problem: Eliot couldn’t actually stop thinking about Quentin, no matter how he tried. Which seemed really fucking unfair, since he’d always excelled at repression, especially with alcohol in the mix. They finished the shitty magicked wine and Eliot refilled it again. Margo refused to drink it on principle, and because, “It’s gonna taste like a moldy cock dipped in gasoline, you know.”

She wasn’t wrong. Eliot drank it anyway. They stumbled back to the penthouse, the setting sun at their backs. Eliot had many regrets.

Home at last, Eliot, somehow, made it up the stairs unassisted, in spite of the whole world tipping like a carnival ride under his feet. He’d intended on making a beeline straight for his bed, but the door to Quentin’s room was open, and Eliot found himself swaying in that direction instead.

He had to hold onto the doorway to keep from falling over. “Hey,” he slurred.

Quentin was lounging on his bed, with what appeared to be every last pillow in the penthouse propping him up. He looked up from his book. Eliot couldn’t tell if he was smiling or frowning. “Hey,” he said.

“Why don’t you wanna kiss me anymore?” Eliot laughed, though he didn’t think anything about this was funny.

“You’re drunk,” Quentin said, and Eliot laughed again.

“Yeah,” he said, gripping the doorway tightly. With every passing second he could feel his body screaming to go sideways. “I’m drunk. On shitty wine I magicked one too many times. And you’re reading the creepy pedophile.”

Quentin shut his book, tossed it on the nightstand. “Come here,” he said. “I’m not strong enough to drag you to bed myself if you pass out.”

Eliot probably felt something then, but he couldn’t exactly be sure. He tottered into the room, and fell face-first down onto Quentin’s bed. Somewhere between curling up around Quentin’s thigh, and Quentin's gentle fingers dragging through his hair, Eliot fell into a black and dreamless sleep.

When he woke it was still dark outside, and Quentin was still there, reading under the gentle glow of an illumination spell. Eliot groaned, sat up. Quentin pushed a bottle of water into his hands.

Eliot chugged down half the bottle and handed it back. “Remind me to stock up on hangover potion supplies,” he said. “And to never double dip on the wine magic ever again.”

“The latter might cancel out the need for the former,” Quentin offered, and then he smiled. The first genuine smile he’d given Eliot in days. It stirred something hot and frantic in his chest, set his heart ticking like a runaway clock.

Eliot was definitely still drunk. He flopped down onto his back and sighed, the ceiling tipping pleasantly overhead. “I wish you weren’t mad at me,” he said, sounding pathetic, feeling it even more so. But whatever. He could always blame the enchanted backwash he’d swilled approximately a gallon of.

“I’m not mad at you,” Quentin said with a sigh. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why did…” Eliot covered his face with his hands, muffling his words into them. “Why did we… stop?”

Quentin was quiet for a moment. Eliot listened to the sound of his breathing. In, out, in. “I guess I just… got freaked out,” he said finally.

Eliot pulled his hands away from his face. “I’m sorry.”

Quentin looked at Eliot, smiling before quickly averting his gaze. “Don’t apologize. We’re both… really bad at this, El.”

“Yeah.” Eliot breathed, in and out. “Why did you get freaked out?”

Quentin laughed. “It’s stupid.”

“It’s okay,” Eliot said, turning on his side, but keeping his hands to himself. He tamped down the hope fluttering in his chest. “You don’t have to say.”

“I thought…” Quentin pushed all the air from his lungs, knocking his head back against his mountain of pillows. “I thought you were trying to talk about it when you… mentioned the mosaic thing. And I thought if we talked about that, um… we would have to talk about… everything.”

Eliot ached. And felt a little sick. The latter was probably the booze. “Q…”

“I…” Quentin’s voice had gone all light and breathy, like the words were flying away before he could catch them. “I thought if we talked about everything you might realize you were right. In the throne room. I—this is stupid, I’m sorry, I—”

“No.” Eliot reached across the distance and caught Quentin’s wrist. Their eyes met. Quentin’s pulse thumped under his touch. Time stilled, for just a moment, and then Eliot slowly pulled away. “Don’t you start apologizing now.”

“Okay,” Quentin said. He looked like he might cry, but then he laughed, sounding nervous, and Eliot thought _I know the feeling._ “I’m sor—god... we really are the worst at this.”

Eliot offered him a little smile. “Truly.”

“So… I guess…” Quentin’s brows knitted together. “We’re talking about it.”

Eliot sat up, regretted this immediately, fell back down again. At least the predicament of his body was distracting from the terror of… everything else. “I think we have to,” he said. “But, um… I’m definitely still drunk.”

Quentin’s body shook with silent laughter. “Okay, um… maybe later then. You should… probably go back to sleep.”

“Yeah,” Eliot said. “You should go to sleep too.”

“Probably,” Quentin said with a sigh. “Do you wanna sleep together?”

Eliot smirked, his cheeks warming a little. “I really, really do.”

Quentin was blushing now too. “Turn over,” he said, a smile softening his face. When Eliot didn’t move right away, Quentin nudged him in the hip. “Would you just do it?”

Eliot’s chest pulled tight as he rolled onto his side, and Quentin pressed himself all along the line of his back, and snaked an arm around his waist, and pulled him close. Eliot threaded their fingers together, shut his eyes, smiling as Quentin nuzzled against the back of his neck. Quentin was warm—always so warm—and Eliot was out almost immediately. 

When he woke again, it was morning, and light was flooding in through the windows, and Quentin was gone.

Hating everything, head throbbing, Eliot pulled himself out of bed. He drank the water on the nightstand, stumbled to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, took a shower. His head still felt like it was swimming underwater when he was through, but at least the body it was attached to felt marginally more human. Eliot went downstairs, finding Margo in the kitchen.

She slid a glass to him across the counter. “Drink,” she said. “Hangover cure.”

Eliot eyed her. “Thought we didn’t have the stuff.”

She smirked. “Coldwater and I went to Brakebills and got it. Now drink.”

Margo and Eliot’s hangover cure tasted like soggy bread left out in the sun, but it did the trick in about ten minutes flat if you managed to keep the whole thing down. Eliot held his nose and chugged, and sat, and waited, and when his head was feeling significantly less balloon-like, he made himself the strongest cup of coffee he could stomach, and stole half of Margo’s bagel.

“You two get your shit together yet?” Margo asked, eying him from across the counter.

“Working on it,” Eliot said. “Where is he by the way?”

“Around.” She shrugged, rounding the counter and kissing him on the cheek. “I’m going back to Fillory. Do your best to dislodge your head from your ass while I’m gone, yeah?”

“Yes, Bambi,” he said, and she trailed away, opened the clock, disappeared into the light.

Eliot found Quentin in the reading alcove, sitting on the window seat, gazing out at the overcast sky. “Hey,” he said, and Quentin turned, smiling in a way that set Eliot’s heart pounding at once.

“Hey.”

Eliot took a step closer, and another. He paused, looking Quentin over. He was just so lovely. Every part of him. His short crop of tousled hair, his soft, shining eyes. The tempting bow of his mouth. The strip of skin from his neck down to his collar that Eliot wanted to cover with kisses. The way his hands fidgeted in his lap. His strong hands. The elegant, beautiful hands of a magician.

But it wasn’t only that Quentin was Eliot’s type in every conceivable way. Or that Eliot’s knees turned to goo every time he smiled. No. Quentin Coldwater was the best person Eliot had ever known. Brave and kind and tender-hearted. Ferocious in protecting the ones he loved. Good and honest and true.

Quentin smiled again, said, “Hey. Come over here,” and all Eliot could think was, _He deserves to be loved._ Suddenly, everything else was secondary.

Eliot breathed in, willing himself to be brave. For just a moment. For him. “I need you to know,” he said, voice quavering, “that you’re the love of my life, Quentin. I just really need you to know that, okay?”

Quentin reached for him. “Come here,” he said. “Please.”

Eliot crossed the distance in a few quick strides, fell into Quentin’s arms and buried his face in his neck. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Quentin stroked his hair, and pulled him back, and said, “We’re done apologizing, remember?”

Eliot fell to his knees at Quentin’s feet, took his hands and pressed a kiss to the back of each one. “I owe you this,” he said. “Let me say it. If we’re talking… that has to be a part of it.”

Quentin touched Eliot’s face, gently. “Okay,” he said. “Say it.”

Eliot leaned into the touch. “I’m sorry,” Eliot said, carefully. As carefully as he’d ever said anything. “I was a liar. And a coward. And I…”

“Okay,” Quentin said. “I forgive you.”

Eliot smiled, tears pricking hotly in his eyes. “I’m not finished.”

Quentin let his hands settle around the curve of Eliot’s neck. “Fine. But I still forgive you.”

Eliot nodded. “I would choose you, Quentin. I, uh… I do. And I’m not going to change my mind.”

Quentin tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Come up here and let me kiss you,” he said, and Eliot wasn’t about to argue with that.

Eliot sat on the window seat, and Quentin crawled into his lap, and straddled his hips. He pressed his soft, warm mouth to Eliot’s. They kissed like time had stilled, coming to a halt just for them. Eternity unfolding around them, for the sake of their love alone. Quentin kept making these happy little sounds that made Eliot’s pulse skip faster. Eliot wanted to give him everything, anything his big, brave heart desired. The moon, the stars, the universe.

Quentin broke the kiss, smiled, said, “I feel like I have to, um… say something too.”

Eliot wrapped Quentin tightly in his arms. “Say anything, baby,” he said. “I’m listening.”

Quentin laughed, all air rattling out of his lungs. Eliot could feel him trembling in every place their bodies touched. “I don’t, uh…” He laughed again, knocking his head against Eliot’s shoulder. “I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay.” Eliot rubbed circles into his back, pressed a kiss into his hair. “We can just sit here if you—”

“I love you,” Quentin blurted, pulling back, meeting Eliot’s gaze head-on. His brows knitted together, and a smile tugged at his lips. He looked confused and elated all at once. “I love you, El. So goddamn much.”

“Q…” Eliot bunched up the back of Quentin’s shirt in his hands, his chest feeling not unlike an overfilled balloon. Like if he didn’t hold on tightly enough, he might just float away. “I love you so goddamn much too.”

Quentin laughed, and laughed, and laughed until tears started welling in his eyes. “That wasn’t hard,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Eliot said, kissing Quentin’s cheek. “But it was still brave.”

“I want…” Quentin knocked their foreheads together with a sigh. “I want us to be together, El. Like…”

Eliot smirked. “Boyfriends?”

“Yeah,” Quentin breathed. “Like boyfriends.”

Eliot nodded, pressed a kiss to Quentin’s mouth. “You wanna ask me out, Coldwater?”

Quentin laughed softly. “I’m pretty sure that’s what I just did, El.”

Eliot’s body was growing warmer by the second. There were too many layers between them. He wanted Quentin’s skin. “Okay, so… does that mean I get to blow you now?”

“I don’t know,” Quentin said softly, blushing, shifting a little in Eliot’s lap. “I feel like there’s more to say.”

“There is,” Eliot said, kissing him again. “But we have time.”

Quentin was melting in his arms, moving a little closer, their chests pressed tightly together. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Eliot pushed up Quentin’s shirt to get at his skin. “Right now… I think I just want my boyfriend to put his dick in my mouth.”

Quentin took a breath. “Lucky boyfriend.”

Eliot hummed. “Lucky me.”

They kissed again, slowly, until their breath was coming very quickly and they’d started rutting together, on instinct, to take a little of the edge off. Quentin moved out of his lap and Eliot got down on his knees. He positioned himself in between Quentin’s parted thighs. They laughed. Quentin bent down and kissed Eliot on the mouth, the forehead. Eliot felt such tenderness for him he didn’t understand how his body had anything left to keep him alive. He should dissolve, he thought, right there. A puddle of clothes and a smile on his face. That’s all that would be left of him if Quentin Coldwater had his way.

Eventually, and through a lot of laughter, Quentin stripped entirely bare. Eliot sat back on his heels, touched Quentin’s ankle, his knee. He breathed, and breathed, and looked at him. It was only Quentin wrapping a hand around his dick and giving it a single stroke that snapped Eliot back to reality.

“Don’t you dare,” Eliot said with a smile, tugging Quentin forward by the hips. “That’s all mine, baby.”

Quentin laughed, and let his head knock back against the window frame, and spread his thighs a little wider. Eliot didn’t wanna wait. He kissed Quentin’s belly, his hip. He took his pretty cock in hand and started to stroke, making Quentin gasp and buck his hips.

Eliot grinned. “You like that?”

Quentin swallowed, nodded, laughed.

“I know you do,” Eliot said. “But I think you might like this more.”

He opened his mouth, and swallowed Quentin down with a moan. Eliot thought that maybe he’d missed this more than anything, the taste of him on his tongue, and Quentin’s strong hands tugging at his hair. If they hadn’t been so stupid, they could have been doing this all along. Truly, they must have been out of their minds.

Eliot pulled back, wiped at his chin, dragging Quentin closer to the edge with one skilled hand. “Tell me you love me,” he said.

Quentin whimpered. “I love you,” he said, laughing. “Do you believe me?.”

“Oh, baby.” Eliot pressed a kiss to the head of his dick. “Of course I believe you. You’re my valentine, remember?”

Eliot gave Quentin his mouth again. Everything was sloppy and warm and wet. Quentin clutched Eliot's hair, babbling his name, hips twitching reflexively. It was over very quickly after that. The strangled sob Quentin made just before he came was the most beautiful sound. Music that Eliot felt down between his legs as he swallowed every last drop Quentin had to give. 

Quentin melted into the window seat, smiling, laughing, his mouth filling with mumbled praise. Eliot couldn’t stop touching him everywhere, pulling himself up to curl in Quentin’s lap the best he could manage with his ridiculously long legs. He pressed kisses to his belly and his hips and his soft cock. Quentin stroked Eliot’s hair, coming back down to reality eventually, willing his tongue to work.

“My turn,” he breathed, and Eliot had nearly forgotten about his own arousal. Everything felt so unimportant compared to this. To Quentin’s skin, the afterglow of his pleasure.

Eliot gazed up at him, smiling, feeling more than a little hazy. “Where do you want me, baby?”

A dopey grin spread over Quentin’s face. “Over in the chair,” he said.

Sorry roommates slash friends, Eliot thought. Maybe they’d just christen the whole penthouse before they were through. There were always cleaning spells.

Eliot stripped as he went, flopping down bare-assed in one of the arm chairs and shooting Quentin a smile. “Come and get it, Coldwater,” he purred, spreading his thighs and wrapping a hand around his dick.

Quentin laughed, and pulled himself to his feet, and went straight down to his knees. When he started to crawl over, Eliot was certain he was dreaming, but he didn’t dare pinch himself. Eliot didn’t want to ever wake up. Quentin came to rest at Eliot’s feet, kissed the curve of his knee. Eliot stroked a hand through his hair, over his face, thumbing at Quentin’s bottom lip.

“Such a pretty mouth,” Eliot said, every last drop of blood in his body rushing down between his legs at the sight. “I’ve missed this.”

“Me too,” Quentin said, kissing the palm of Eliot’s hand. “I’ve missed you.”

Quentin went a little ravenous then, wasting no time taking Eliot into his mouth. Eliot should have been embarrassed by the sounds it pulled from his chest, but he wanted to give Quentin everything, all the softest spaces of his heart. He wanted to fall apart at Quentin's command. Eliot came so quickly, he could hardly believe it, pulsing hotly on Quentin’s tongue as the world turned to stars all around them.

After, they curled up together on the floor, grinning into each other’s necks, pressing lips to skin, fingers tangling in hair. Quentin said, “Let’s do that again,” with a laugh, and Eliot pulled him tightly to his chest.

“We are definitely doing that again as soon as physically possible,” he said, smiling into Quentin’s hair. “But maybe we should clean up and go upstairs so our friends don’t murder us when they come home.”

A silent laugh rolled through Quentin’s body. “Good idea,” he said. “In a minute. This is really nice.”

“Yeah,” Eliot said, pressing a kiss to the top of Quentin’s head. “Maybe feelings aren't the worst.”

"Maybe not." Quentin looked up at him. He couldn't stop smiling. It made Eliot feel delirious. "I really love you, El."

Eliot blushed, his chest swelled. He was so happy to be alive. In this moment, with the man of his dreams. The love of his life. "I really love you too, Q."

**Author's Note:**

> And that's all she wrote on this little series that was never meant to be a series to begin with. 🖤


End file.
